By the fire tower, above the bush with the paddle green leaves, and somewhere beyond the twin pale trunks, somewhere, in the dark brush, is a special bird.

“Pitta,” says Hari. “Pitta.”

He hurries to arrange his apparatus, a tripod and a strong telescope in a green cover, while he plays a recorded pitta call on his phone to try and tempt the bird forward, amplified with a bright blue speaker. When he stops the recording, he leans forward into the forest and cups his hands behind his ears. After a moment, the pitta responds with its own similar call, but faintly, as if he suspects it might be a trick. After repeating the process another three times, playing the recording, listening for the call, Hari has a good idea where the pitta bird is on the forest floor and aims the telescope.

“Just behind horizontal branch,” he says. “Pitta.”

When I look into the telescope I see only the horizontal branch, and not the pitta. Perhaps it’s camouflaged, or it only appears for Hari.

“I don’t see it,” I say, stepping gingerly away from the tripod.

“Here — head coming up and down,” says Hari and steps away again. I look and this time I wait. The bird calls again, and as he calls his orange juice head crowns over the horizontal branch with such a shock of colour that I think it’s lightning.

“Oh!” I say. The head disappears again beneath the branch. I try to peer around the rim of the telescope but the picture bends and becomes nonsense. I wait again, then the orange flash appears along with the call. This time the pitta keeps its head raised and I can see the where the bright orange crown fades to yellow, and then the sleek black mask over its black eyes.

When I look away from the telescope I don’t believe that the pitta bird is truly in the piece of forest in the front of us. For a start I can’t see it, or the horizontal branch, without the telescope and yet both are mere metres away. But also, in the telescope the bird is so perfect, its orange so jewel-like, its eyes so black, that it seems to have been caught there, preserved in glass.